First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men, for kings and all who are in authority, so that we may lead a tranquil and quiet life in all godliness and dignity. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. (1 Timothy 2:1-4 NASB)
Ladies and Gentlemen! I address myself to my American brethren primarily with this thought. Have you read any of the rhetoric in the press about Mitt Romney or Barack Obama or their respective political parties? I know, how can you not? And I don’t even live in the USA! I’m from north of that particular border, but we have a lot of American TV, Facebook is an American company, you get the idea. Who is right? Who is not? Who cares? (We should!) Who do we vote for? (It should be the one that best represents your ideals, because we live in representative democracies, or so they tell us.)
I’m not saying that character doesn’t matter, it does. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have opinions, clearly we should, and they matter. I’m not saying that I don’t have a preference, I do, and if I were American I would vote accordingly (Hey, we do this every 4 years in Canada too these days).
What really has me, well, agitated, are the personal attacks on men that you only think you know. For example, calling Barack Obama the Antichrist - folks, he doesn’t fit the qualifications. Ostensibly, he was born in Hawaii, and even if he was born in Kenya (I don’t think so, personally, but hey, maybe he was), that’s still the geographically wrong place for that particular individual to enter the world. (Yes, I actually do study this stuff, and I think everyone should!) Or calling Mitt Romney a ne’er-do-well with no real ideas of his own - come on, the man actually navigated some pretty choppy financial water successfully, and he does have more than basic intelligence.
I read a poster the other day that says it all for me: no matter who is President, JESUS IS KING. It really gets me that some of the idiocy I hear comes from the so-called “religious right wing” folks. Folks, I speak as one of YOU! There is no place for the demeaning personal attacks. They are designed to incite those who are driven by emotion (that’s about 80% of us according to research) to a point of view that they did not think of themselves for reasons that are not their own. This is not how Christians should behave!
The verse I shared at the beginning of this is how we should treat our political leaders. Because we live in democracies here in the western world, people have the RIGHT to voice their own opinion, regardless of how right or how wrong it is - and if we want to curtail or manipulate it, however subtly, we do so at our own peril - “do unto others,” Jesus said.
It says in other passages in Scripture that GOD HIMSELF engineers the governments that rule over our nations (Romans 13:1-3 if you demand to see an example of that). We need to pray for them, that they will allow us to live lives that are representative of Christ in the world, not jump on party bandwagons and lead marches toward legislatures or participate in civil disobedience because the government did or proposed something we didn’t like. (There is a time for that, and it is laid out in Scripture - and it has been done before, in the formation of the United States of America!)
What we need to avoid is political activism, brothers and sisters in the faith! We need to be involved in SPIRITUAL ACTIVISM! We need to KNOW why we perform actions, not just follow the crowd. In 45 years of life, I have NEVER come across a situation that could be made better by going to war, physically or figuratively. (I am, however, a proponent of si vis pacem, para bellum (if you want peace, prepare for war). We should know the arguments! We should pay attention to speeches, we should question values and character, because the matter to GOD! Not because some bunch of guys in some political war room want to stir up your emotions, which let’s face it, don’t always respond the way they should. I’m not mitigating personal responsibility here, I’m encouraging it!
What we should be doing is quietly voting our conscience and living our lives publicly before God, as examples of the peace and tranquility that Christ brings to our lives. THIS is good and acceptable to God. And this is more effective than any other weapon in our arsenal on winning people to Christ - when they see YOUR life change in response to trials. William Toms said it like this: ”You are the only Bible some people will ever read.” Let’s make sure that they read one that is real with God, not some overstated and overrated version of it.
’Nuff said.
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"You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free."
-John 8:32 (NASB)
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